When a group of disgruntled artists founded Image Comics in the 1990’s, their main reason for doing so was allowing themselves to create characters without the executive meddling that had driven Marvel and DC […]

There’s an adorable little manga I like named Gisèle Alain, about a precocious thirteen-year-old rich girl in 19th century France who inherits an apartment building and spends her days helping its tenants with all sorts of odd jobs, from plain old deliveries to live-changing affairs. More so than because of its gorgeous artwork and lovingly represented(if somewhat animefied) historical setting, I love it because of how nuanced it is for a slice-of-life.

I don’t need to tell you that 2014 was kind of a crappy year. A year filled with political upheaval, heartbreaking deaths and communities succumbing to fear and selfishness. 2014 was the year of people being whipped for dancing, of civilian planes being shot down by warmongers, of innocent people being decapitated on screen, of massacres, intolerance, religious extremism and neoconservative discourse spreading around the world like a blight.